No legal basis for employers to process workers’ vaccine status, DPC rules

Data watchdog says lack of public health advice requiring businesses to collect vaccination data means doing so may be ‘unnecessary and excessive’

Some 94 per cent of businesses said they had no employee vaccination strategy in place, a survey shows. Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto

There is currently no legal basis for employers to collect information on the vaccination status of their employees, the Data Protection Commission (DPC) has ruled.

The watchdog is to tell employers that, in the absence of public health advice making it a requirement for employers to establish whether their staff are vaccinated, processing vaccine data “is likely to represent unnecessary and excessive data collection for which no clear legal basis exists”.

In an unpublished guidance ...